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Western Culture
Global Presents
The Top
100 Heroes of Western Culture
These individuals have most contributed to replacing
ignorance with knowledge, savagery with civilization,
disease with health, tyranny with liberty, poverty
with abundance, and despair with happiness.
#61: Claudius Ptolemy (90-168)
Claudius Ptolemy was a Greek mathematician, geographer and astronomer.
Ptolemy was the author of many scientific treatises, several of
which would be of continuing importance to later scientists. In
fact, Ptolemy’s ideas were influential in some capacity for
at least 1,500 years.
The greatness of Ptolemy is not that his ideas were correct; most
of his work was eventually proven wrong. Rather, his heroism
lies in his approach toward knowledge. His quest for grand comprehension,
his combining mathematics with observational data, and his passion
for worldliness and intellectuality would influence and inspire
future generations to cast off the religion-inspired other-worldliness
and ignorance of the Middle Ages and return to reason,
learning and knowledge.
In other words, the rediscovery of Ptolemy’s work in the Middle
Ages helped ignite the European Renaissance, a renewal which most
of the world still benefits from today.
Go to #62: David Ricardo
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